assemble in the belfry steeple, and in turn
ring the bell: the sexton receiving a small
fee from each lad; and at the sound of
the bell, all the housewives in the parish
begin to fry pancakes. There are schools
in which the master, at eleven o'clock on the
eventful morning, will say to the youngsters,
"Now, boys, the pancake-bell is ringing;
go home and help your mothers to make
the pancakes." Nay, even at the dignified
Westminster School, there is a pancake
ceremonial on this day. At eleven o'clock
on Shrove Tuesday, we are told, one of the
vergers of the Abbey goes into the school
kitchen, and presently emerges with the
head-cook, the latter carrying a thick
substantial pancake in a frying-pan. Entering
the schoolroom, the verger announces "The
cook!" Studies are suspended, and all
eyes are turned upon the cook, conspicuous
by his white apron, jacket, and cap.
Advancing to the centre of the room, he
approaches the elevated bar which separates
the upper school from the lower. Twirling
the frying pan dextrously round, he aims
to throw the pancake over the bar; if he
fails, the boys pelt him with books; if he
succeeds, he obtains two guineas from the
Abbey funds—therefore he makes a point
of succeeding. Then comes a struggle.
If the pancake is broken into fragments
during the scramble for it, no reward
ensues; but if one boy can carry it off
safely to the deanery, the dean gives him
a guinea. We may safely surmise that the
pancake is purposely made thick, tough,
and strong, to bear this strange ordeal.

But how about the origin of all this?
There is a popular theory in Mansfield
and Sherwood Forest, connecting the
pancakes with the old days when the Danes
ravaged that part of England. When the
Danes reached the town or village of
Linby, all the Saxon men of the
neighbouring villages ran off into the forest, and
the Danes took the Saxon women to keep
house for them. The women, by secret
agreement with their countrymen, undertook
to murder their Danish tyrants on
the ensuing Ash Wednesday. Every
woman who agreed to do this was to bake a
pancake on Shrove Tuesday, as a kind of
pledge to fulfil her vow. Everything took
place accordingly: the pancakes were made
on the Tuesday, and the Danish tyrants
put to death on the Wednesday. A very
good story this, from a Saxon point of
view; but there is another, much more
cogent and reasonable. In the old Church
days, when the Lenten fast was a serious
matter, the church-bell summoned the
people to shrove, shrift, or confession on
the day before Ash Wednesday, as a
preparative to Lent. And either the same bell,
or another ringing on the same day, set
the housewives busily to work, to use up
all the dripping, lard, and grease in the
house; pancakes were made in store, and
a jollification ensued, to mark the transition
from feasting to fasting. Such, it
seems, was the origin of the pancake-bell.

And who invented hot cross buns?
Here is another query, another crotchet,
relating to dainty bread. Cotgrave, one of
our old lexicographers, spoke of "a kind of
hard-crusted bread, whose loaves doe somewhat
resemble the Dutch bunnes of our
Rhenish wine-house." Now this is a note-
worthy point; for the hard-crusted bread,
taken with wine, more resembles wine
biscuits or wine rusks than our soft buns.
There are Scotch buns, made and eaten
chiefly at Christmas, with a very hard
crust, something like those apparently here
adverted to; a soft English bun would be
rather called a cookie, or cooky, in the
north. Some buns, containing coriander
seeds, and eaten with honey, resemble
(though larger) the altar bread used in
some countries in former ages.

The hot cross bun, however, is admittedly
associated with the most solemn day in the
Church calendar. There was at one time
a superstition that bread baked on Good
Friday possessed special virtues; some of
it was kept all through the year, under
a belief that a few gratings of it in water
would be a remedy for many bodily
diseases. In England, as we all know
(but not in Scotland), the purchase of
buns hot from the oven is one of the
recognised modes of observing Good Friday.
The bun is somewhat spicy inside, and has
a sugary glaze on the top, with a cross
marked or stamped thereon. Whether it
is eaten hot or cold, with butter or without,
toasted or untoasted, each family
decides according to circumstances; but
the itinerant vendors (not so numerous
now as of yore) all have pretty much the
same cry. Who these vendors are, whence
they come, and what is their occupation
on the other three hundred and sixty-
four days of the year, are questions left
somewhat in mystery; for the people are
evidently not all connected with the
baking trade. That the buns are all hot,
that they are crossed, that they are "one
a penny, two a penny," are facts asserted
in a very determined and unanimous way